Many of us have been critical of Fujifilm’s peculiar marketing decisions over the years in respect of its varied lines of cameras.
Your reporter, with some time on his hands this morning, was viewing an official Fujifilm website to check out a new release that has a 24 MP APS-C sensor with a conventional Bayer topology; I do not mention the model name here, because then the post will be tagged automatically by the site software and perhaps moved to a different forum than the one where I am posting. You will, however, see the camera model referenced in some of the links below.
The site has a “gallery” of sample images to show the new model’s capabilities; the gallery comprises all of three (3) images, all attributed to Norifumi Inagaki, or (in Japanese syntax) Inagaki Norifumi-san.
Personal opinion: My own impression — feel free to disagree — was a multi-part question: “What was Fujifilm thinking? Why did the company hold up those images as exemplars?”
Here (referenced as a link; the file is too large to embed in a post) is the first of the three images: http://www.fujifilm.com/products/di..._x_a3/sample_images/img/index/ff_x_a3_001.JPG
My opinion is that that image linked above does not bathe in glory the camera with which it was captured; it certainly does nothing to enhance the reputation of the 16 mm - 50 mm zoom kit kens that is sold with that model; and had I, not Mr. Inagaki, taken the photo, I would be shy to admit it, and reluctant about having my name and reputation associated with that image. The whitewashed walls are not only white, but completely blown highlights. The lens yields a very soft rendition at the edges and at the corners of the frame. And the red flowers, presumably geraniums, as indicated by the accompanying leaves, are so grossly over-saturated that they block up, and so if one looked only at the image’s presentation of the blossoms there would be no way to tell whether they were roses or peonies or whatever. What was Fujifilm thinking in posting that as a sample image of the camera’s capability?
Mr. Inagaki is one among a select, and presumably privileged, cohort of photographers whom Fujifilm designates as “X-Photographers” and whose images are featured in Galleries on the official Fujifilm websites. My curiosity being piqued by the image referenced above, I decided to check out Mr. Inagaki’s body of work, as selected by Fujifilm, to see what he brings to the table to get such exposure on the Fujifilm websites. Even Homer sometimes nods, or, in the Japanese version of that aphorism, even monkeys fall out of trees. (Or — this morning’s Twitter-buster — even a politician whose name will appear on the ballot of 50 states as a candidate for President can be ignorant that Aleppo, Syria, is a “where?” not a “what?") Maybe the geranium image linked above is an aberration.
I chose, first, to look at Gallery 06, http://fujifilm-x.com/photographers/norifumi-inagaki/galleries/gallery-06/ because it features photos taken with a compact model of Fujifilm that has a sensor the same size — 2/3" — as two models of Fujifilm cameras that I have used extensively the past three-plus years. The featured image in Gallery 06 is of an outdoor café alongside some streetcar tracks in an unidentified European city. There are no patrons seated at the tables, perhaps because they were inside cowering in underground bomb shelters to avoid the nuclear explosion in the vicinity the flash of which surely caused the entire image to be so grossly overexposed. Blown highlights overlapping blown highlights. Surely the XQ1 must be capable of better? Maybe not: in another image in the same gallery, of a couple in an Austin Healy on what appears to be a drizzly day, the woman’s blond hair has blown highlights. And a third picture in the same gallery, of a small ice sculpture, is characterized by blown highlights. There seems to be a pattern here. A fourth image in that same gallery, featuring two men at the railing of a bridge, has no blown highlights, but instead a strange white balance and a horizon line so skewed that if I were those men, I should be constantly glancing to my right in fear of runaway trucks or killer bowling balls.
In 2015 (April), I visited the same city of which landscapes are featured in Mr. Inagaki’s Gallery 08 on the Fujifilm site; I took several dozen landscape photos there with my humble Fujifilm F70EXR and XF1 cameras (set to M — 5 MP and 6 MP, respectively — image size), all of them handheld, several of them from the platform of a moving boat. Of course, none of mine were framed exactly as any of the images in Inagaki Gallery 06 was framed, but there certainly is overlap of subject. Here are two screen captures of images in Mr. Inagaki’s Gallery 08:
Copyright ©Norifumi Inagaki; link to URL of original below. Fujifilm X-Pro 1 with 10 mm -24 mm XF lens.
Copyright ©Norifumi Inagaki; link to URL of original below. Fujifilm X-Pro 1 with 10 mm - 24 mm XF lens.
Here is the link to the two photos above: >http://fujifilm-x.com/photographers/norifumi-inagaki/galleries/gallery-08/
Your reporter’s capture of similar scenes, lacking the benefit of a 16 MP APS-C size sensor and a tripod:
Fujifilm F70EXR, set to M (5 MP) size.
Fujifilm F70EXR, set to M (5 MP) size.
Fujifilm XF1, set to M (6 MP) size. Note the bird ascending, its wing wake on the surface of the water, dead center of the image.
My purpose in posting, I assure you, is NOT to brag, but rather to pose the question: if a rank amateur like me, using mere 1/2" and 2/3" EXR sensor equipped F70EXR and XF1 cameras, can get images such as the above with no special prep, what is Fujifilm under the impression that it is proving when it posts images such as those above that were taken by Mr. Inagaki with the top of the (then current) line APS-C X-Trans sensor equipped Fujifilm X-Pro 1? What am I missing here?
Your reporter, with some time on his hands this morning, was viewing an official Fujifilm website to check out a new release that has a 24 MP APS-C sensor with a conventional Bayer topology; I do not mention the model name here, because then the post will be tagged automatically by the site software and perhaps moved to a different forum than the one where I am posting. You will, however, see the camera model referenced in some of the links below.
The site has a “gallery” of sample images to show the new model’s capabilities; the gallery comprises all of three (3) images, all attributed to Norifumi Inagaki, or (in Japanese syntax) Inagaki Norifumi-san.
Personal opinion: My own impression — feel free to disagree — was a multi-part question: “What was Fujifilm thinking? Why did the company hold up those images as exemplars?”
Here (referenced as a link; the file is too large to embed in a post) is the first of the three images: http://www.fujifilm.com/products/di..._x_a3/sample_images/img/index/ff_x_a3_001.JPG
My opinion is that that image linked above does not bathe in glory the camera with which it was captured; it certainly does nothing to enhance the reputation of the 16 mm - 50 mm zoom kit kens that is sold with that model; and had I, not Mr. Inagaki, taken the photo, I would be shy to admit it, and reluctant about having my name and reputation associated with that image. The whitewashed walls are not only white, but completely blown highlights. The lens yields a very soft rendition at the edges and at the corners of the frame. And the red flowers, presumably geraniums, as indicated by the accompanying leaves, are so grossly over-saturated that they block up, and so if one looked only at the image’s presentation of the blossoms there would be no way to tell whether they were roses or peonies or whatever. What was Fujifilm thinking in posting that as a sample image of the camera’s capability?
Mr. Inagaki is one among a select, and presumably privileged, cohort of photographers whom Fujifilm designates as “X-Photographers” and whose images are featured in Galleries on the official Fujifilm websites. My curiosity being piqued by the image referenced above, I decided to check out Mr. Inagaki’s body of work, as selected by Fujifilm, to see what he brings to the table to get such exposure on the Fujifilm websites. Even Homer sometimes nods, or, in the Japanese version of that aphorism, even monkeys fall out of trees. (Or — this morning’s Twitter-buster — even a politician whose name will appear on the ballot of 50 states as a candidate for President can be ignorant that Aleppo, Syria, is a “where?” not a “what?") Maybe the geranium image linked above is an aberration.
I chose, first, to look at Gallery 06, http://fujifilm-x.com/photographers/norifumi-inagaki/galleries/gallery-06/ because it features photos taken with a compact model of Fujifilm that has a sensor the same size — 2/3" — as two models of Fujifilm cameras that I have used extensively the past three-plus years. The featured image in Gallery 06 is of an outdoor café alongside some streetcar tracks in an unidentified European city. There are no patrons seated at the tables, perhaps because they were inside cowering in underground bomb shelters to avoid the nuclear explosion in the vicinity the flash of which surely caused the entire image to be so grossly overexposed. Blown highlights overlapping blown highlights. Surely the XQ1 must be capable of better? Maybe not: in another image in the same gallery, of a couple in an Austin Healy on what appears to be a drizzly day, the woman’s blond hair has blown highlights. And a third picture in the same gallery, of a small ice sculpture, is characterized by blown highlights. There seems to be a pattern here. A fourth image in that same gallery, featuring two men at the railing of a bridge, has no blown highlights, but instead a strange white balance and a horizon line so skewed that if I were those men, I should be constantly glancing to my right in fear of runaway trucks or killer bowling balls.
In 2015 (April), I visited the same city of which landscapes are featured in Mr. Inagaki’s Gallery 08 on the Fujifilm site; I took several dozen landscape photos there with my humble Fujifilm F70EXR and XF1 cameras (set to M — 5 MP and 6 MP, respectively — image size), all of them handheld, several of them from the platform of a moving boat. Of course, none of mine were framed exactly as any of the images in Inagaki Gallery 06 was framed, but there certainly is overlap of subject. Here are two screen captures of images in Mr. Inagaki’s Gallery 08:
Copyright ©Norifumi Inagaki; link to URL of original below. Fujifilm X-Pro 1 with 10 mm -24 mm XF lens.
Copyright ©Norifumi Inagaki; link to URL of original below. Fujifilm X-Pro 1 with 10 mm - 24 mm XF lens.
Here is the link to the two photos above: >http://fujifilm-x.com/photographers/norifumi-inagaki/galleries/gallery-08/
Your reporter’s capture of similar scenes, lacking the benefit of a 16 MP APS-C size sensor and a tripod:
Fujifilm F70EXR, set to M (5 MP) size.
Fujifilm F70EXR, set to M (5 MP) size.
Fujifilm XF1, set to M (6 MP) size. Note the bird ascending, its wing wake on the surface of the water, dead center of the image.
My purpose in posting, I assure you, is NOT to brag, but rather to pose the question: if a rank amateur like me, using mere 1/2" and 2/3" EXR sensor equipped F70EXR and XF1 cameras, can get images such as the above with no special prep, what is Fujifilm under the impression that it is proving when it posts images such as those above that were taken by Mr. Inagaki with the top of the (then current) line APS-C X-Trans sensor equipped Fujifilm X-Pro 1? What am I missing here?
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